Open Sources: Voices from the Open Source Revolution (O’Reilly Open Source)
Freely available source code, with contributions from thousands of programmers around the world: this is the spirit of the software revolution known as Open Source. In Open Sources, leaders of Open Source come together for the first time to discuss
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(out of 22 reviews)
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Review by Pete Gale for Open Sources: Voices from the Open Source Revolution (O’Reilly Open Source)
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First of all, take a look at the list of authors. It reads as a “Who’s Who” guide for the software and tools I’m running on my current system. (Kernel by Torvalds, GNU/Free Software by Stallman, Open Source Software by a number of individuals/companies (esr, Perens), development tools by Cygnus (Tiemann), DNS by Vixie, web server by Apache (Behlendorf), CGI programming in Perl by Wall, browser by Netscape (Hamerly, Paquin), Linux Distribution by RedHat (Young), and references by O’Reilly. (Of course, there should be an “et al.” behind every one of these names.)This is a great book for achieving basic literacy in the (generically-termed) Open Source movement.By reading this book, you’ll get rms’ view of why software must be free. (And indeed, why it eventually will be free.) You’ll also find out how some companies (like the newly-merged RedHat/Cygnus conglomerate) can thrive in a market where the product is free.If you read *all* of the essays, you’ll even find out why the Free Software Foundation’s GPL does not work in some cases, and how “Open Source Software” is similar to and differs from “Free Software”. (The below reviewer should be slapped with his Clue Stick for not taking the time to read and understand this important difference. ;-)And you’ll also find out why Perl (like Larry Wall himself) is so strange and brilliant at the same time.The reason this book only gets 4 stars is due to the lack of proofing. One of Wall’s diagrams is completely missing, and there are numerous typos. This is the first O’Reilly book I’ve seen with a lot of stupid mistakes. (And I’ve seen a lot of them. =)PKG
Review by tomr for Open Sources: Voices from the Open Source Revolution (O’Reilly Open Source)
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This is a good idea on O’Reilly’s part to try to document the history and goals of the Open Source movement, which had roots in several college campuses and research labs in the ’70s and ’80s, and became news in the late ’90s with the popularity of Linux, Apache, and the decision of Netscape to open its browser source. The best introductory piece, however, is probably Eric Raymond’s “Cathedral and the Bazaar” which is not in this book(O’Reilly publishes it separately, but it’s available free on the Web and short enough to be read in one sitting). As for this collection, I liked Robert Young’s business case for distributing open source – his story of how Red Hat was launched reminds me of the Compaq tale of “three guys in a restaurant”. The Apache article is also quite good, and Linus Torvalds offers a brief but interesting (and characteristically opinionated) article about how Linux evolved technically. There’s also a good article discussing the various open source licenses (BSD, GPL, Netscape, etc) and what they do and don’t restrict.Others I was less impressed with. Stallman’s article is predictable and self-serving. He explains how he evolved his software-as-gift philosophy but doesn’t come close to terms with how the software industry can support substantial employment if all source is given away. There’s yet another history of the different branches of BSD Unix. There’s a breathtaking inside account of the launch of Mozilla which ends with the fancy Silicon Valley party when development has finally gotten underway. The low point is Larry Wall’s “essay”, which is a frankly ridiculous waste of time and print.Although this is a mixed bag, there’s enough reference material and interesting points of view to keep the book around.
Review by Michael Boudreau for Open Sources: Voices from the Open Source Revolution (O’Reilly Open Source)
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I agree with many of the reviewers below that this book was helpful and often interesting. It gives a readable orientation to one of the most important movements in the software industry today, and the editors have been fortunate to gather together so many contributors who obviously know whereof they speak. In particular, the editors’ Introduction, Eric Raymond’s “Brief History of Hackerdom,” Richard Stallman’s account of GNU and FSF, Bruce Perens’s discussion of Open Source, and Tim O’Reilly’s essay on “Infoware” were informative and thought-provoking.That said, it should be noted that the Amazon reviewer above gets it wrong when she writes that the book gives a “fascinating look at the raging debate.” In fact, *nothing* about Open Source is debated in this book, which is a major disappointment. As the reviewer from Princeton below notes, the goodness of everything Open Source and the badness of everything Microsoft seems to be a given for many of the writers. At the risk of criticizing the book for not being something its creators didn’t intend, I think it would be greatly improved with the addition of a wider range of viewpoints and even a dissenting voice or two. (There are a number of essays that could give place to some alternate content: Eric Raymond’s second essay, “The Revenge of the Hackers,” leans heavily toward the self-congratulatory, as does the Netscape cheerleaders’ “Story of Mozilla.” And Larry Wall’s “Diligence, Patience, and Humility” seems to have been included not on its own merits but on the author’s reputation as the Perl Deity.)A final wish is for the book to address a broader range of readers. As a longtime computer user but a relatively new programmer, with no formal business training, I found many of the essays to rely heavily on the jargon of hackers and MBAs. More editorial control here, in addition to a broader range of content, would make this book seem less like preaching to the choir and more effective at spreading the Open Source gospel.
Review by for Open Sources: Voices from the Open Source Revolution (O’Reilly Open Source)
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Open Sources is a collection of essays by people who have been involved in a prominent way in what is being called “the open source revolution.” The authors are all very bright people with good intentions and diverse viewpoints; this makes for interesting reading. However, I had a problem with the introduction. In fact, I hated it. It attempts to couch the issue of free vs. non-free software in religious terms: in the bad old days, free software only came from universities or other government-funded research. Then, a few companies saw the light and began to open-source their software; currently the industry is divided between these companies (the saved) and the rest of the companies (the damned) who will spiral into oblivion due to their proprietary selfishness. I thought the presence of this sort of rhetoric in the introduction, which sets the tone for the rest of the book, was particularly unfortunate.The essays in Open Sources are a mixed bag. Kirk McKusick’s history of Berkeley UNIX is great, as is Michael Tiemann’s history of Cygnus Solutions, RMS’s article about the GNU project, and Bruce Perens’ article about licensing issues. Also, I really enjoyed the transcript of the infamous 1992 flame war between Linus and Andy Tanenbaum about the merits of Linux vs. Minix. On the other hand, Paul Vixie’s article about software engineering is pretty random, Larry Wall’s article does not seem to have a point at all, and Eric Raymond’ssecond article and Tom Paquin’s account of the open-sourcing of Netscape are too self-serving to be useful. Overall, I enjoyed this book quite a bit. However, the year that has passed since its publication has exposed some of the more outlandish predictions made by its contributors (Eric Raymond said that Windows 2000 would either be canceled or be a complete disaster). My guess is that Open Sources is not destined to become a classic. Rather, in a few years it will be viewed as an interesting but somewhat naive period piece.
Review by for Open Sources: Voices from the Open Source Revolution (O’Reilly Open Source)
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First, an aside: Would someone announce–loud and clear, so everyone can hear: We’ve already had a chance to learn The History of Unix (canonical and apocrypha), and it wasn’t all that engaging even the first time and çela ne nous intèresse pas anymore. Now the rest. The book is a collection of essays–boring, self-aggrandizing, looking disingenuous even to a most sympathetic reader (as I initially was.) The impression is that a few individuals–not particularly brilliant, somewhat embittered, historically having little to do with one another (but assembled for a cause), armed with a dictionary of quotations, locked themselves up in a room and engaged in endless recitations of pretentious nonsense–to one another.I feel they are trying to hype themselves into stardom by capitalizing on “MS evil empire” theme. There’s no end to baseless yet feisty pronouncements pointing to the purportedly obvious wickedness and technical inadequacy of _whatever_ comes from MS–which are immediately countered by the authors’ (very questionable and, in my opinion, not in good faith) ideas supposedly reining in The Devil. Needless to say, Tim O’Reilly et al. are thickly suggested for the role of redeemers. FUD? Noooo, everyone knows FUD only comes from MSoft.The general line is as follows: Everything “open source” is “nice” and “tightly written”. All MS things are no good by definition. No argument is given–those are articles of faith.Let’s see… Tim O’Reilly is thrilled–his friends don’t just log on the Internet–no, it’s much more subtle. Are you paying attention? Coz that’s real deep–they go to Amazon.com! Wow! From that incredible revelation, by way of thick non-sequiturs the existence of a supposedly new and as supposedly important phenomenon–“Infoware”–is said to be proven. I kind of thought that I don’t just drive about roads–I, like–two lefts/one right–I go shopping. Now I can do it on-line. How earth-shattering is that? Infoware my foot, Tim. Leave bs to Yourdon…Moving on: Eric Raymond (of the ponderous “Cathedral and Bazaar” fame), a self proclaimed philosopher of The Movement of The Pure divines: “Microsoft will not have an enterprise-ready operaing system, because Windows 2000 will not ship in a usable form” (at 60 million lines and still bloating, its development is out of control.)” I’m pleased to see an editor’s hand in this grammatically impeccable phrase. But, how is a number of lines of code related to being “out of control”? What does it mean to be ‘out of control’ in this context? How many lines of code did VMS contain? MVS? System 36? But, hey: why be specific? Propaganda will do… Let’s see, what else is wrong with MS? Here you go: (page 11 of Introduction) “…the major errors of the Windows NT kernels, namely the inclusion of ill tested or ill-chosen third party drivers and making the Gui part of the kernel.” But drivers _by definition_ are ALWAYS part of a kernel, in _any_ operating system, even in–would you believe it–Linux. What’s left? “ill tested” I guess. How are they ill-tested? Hmmm… here: If it comes with “MS” on it, it’s got to be bad. Linux drivers, otoh, are never ill-tested . Repeat after me, boys and girls: linux drivers–along with everything else from the “open source movement”–are always “nice” and “tightly written.” (That’s because the open source movement comprises only geniuses (programming- and other-wise.) Just look at those de rigueur “when he’s not busy programming” nauseatingly cheezy blurbs on the back cover. A word about Larry Wall (whose Perl I like) and his contribution to this book. First, I’ve already seen this article somewhere. Second, the man must be on drugs. His essay, imo, beats all else in this book in terms of priestly-highfalutin mindless drivel. (Not that the rest of the book is *very* far away ;-)Btw, I gotta say that a) MS doesn’t pay me to write that, and b) I had always attributed a lot of class to O’Reilly. Well, bummer… we’re all human, I guess. They didn’t keep it up after all. I’ve always suspected something, namely that–to paraphraze the bloated Goebbels Limbaugh–preoccupation with computer “hacking” is a way for physically unattractive males to enter the mainstream of society. Anyway. I’m very irritated by this book. I suggest you don’t buy it.